


The Plunge

by thankyouturtle



Category: Chalet School - Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
Genre: Community: Lime Green Musings, First Job, Gen, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouturtle/pseuds/thankyouturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Len finally understands what it means to be the new girl at school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Plunge

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Back to School".

When Len thought back to her first days at school - and she'd had several of them - she couldn't remember feeling scared, or nervous. In England she'd known her teachers, she'd had her sisters there, and the school grounds were almost as familiar to her as her own home, or the Round House. Canada had been a little different, but there'd been Margot, eager to show her sisters the best parts of their new environment. Even at Oxford, there'd been none of this clenched feeling in her stomach, the sudden pumping of her heart as she glanced up at the clock and once more counted the minutes until her day was going to Begin.

For about the third time she nervously smoothed her skirt and mentally surveyed the room. New box of chalk, clean blackboard, fresh flowers. Twenty desks and chairs, in equally spaced rows of five. The paperwork on her own desk in a neat pile, roll book open. Mamma had sent, at her request, a stack of old pictorial magazines, whose colourful photographs of mountains and lakes were now adourning the walls.

_At least I really know how the new girls feel, now,_ Len thought with a momentary spark of humour. She'd always thought, at school, that it was just a case of a new girl learning the new rules and fitting in. As if she could walk into that staff-room of disinterested colleagues and "just" learn the rules! As if she could somehow already know where to sit, who to talk to, which of her students would play her up, who needed a carrot and who a stick. Her mouth twisted in to a crooked smile. Her favourite professor had warned her that the first year of teaching was more about learning than anything else; he'd told her to be prepared to go back to school. _But I'm not going back to school,_ Len realised. _This is it. This is my first day, my first real first day at school._

Her eyes once more darted to the class-room clock. Still twenty minutes to go before she could expect her class to arrive from their morning assembly. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath in.


End file.
